Knox County students will go to Florida to see experiments head to space

Bearden Middle School’s winning pinkeye experiment is ready to launch to the International Space Station.

Gary LeCleir, a University of Tennessee microbiology assistant research professor, watches Riley Speas (left) of Bearden High School and James Pierce (Right) of West High School use pipettes to work with common pinkeye bacteria. The students designed a microgravity experiment to see if a common pinkeye treatment would work the same way in space as it would on earth.(Photo: Submitted by Virginia Brown)

Students from Bearden, Halls and Vine middle schools will travel to Cape Canaveral next week to see student-designed experiments launched into space.

Knox County Schools have participated in the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education’s Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) since 2012. Students in the program draft a proposal for a microgravity experiment they’d like to see performed at the International Space Station.

For more than a year, they compete on a strict timeline with other schools in their district for a single spot on an SSEP mission.

A team of nine students from Bearden plus one from West High School won a place on Mission 9 with their microgravity experiment designed to test a treatment for common pinkeye in space.

A team of Halls Middle School sixth-graders came in second place with their experiment proposal to analyze the effect of microgravity on the germination of squash seeds. They will join Bearden on the trip, along with a team from Vine Middle School who won a place on the Mission 11 spaceflight in June.

The program is open to grades 5-12 at any school in Knox County. So far, Vine, West Valley, Bearden, Gresham, Halls, Hardin Valley and the L&N STEM Academy have participated.

“In the Office of Innovation, we strive to support schools with innovative programming that encourages our students to be bold and brave in their approach to problem solving," said Daphne Odom, Executive Director of Innovation and School Improvement. "We want to support our students to be risk takers who embody the innovator’s mindset.”

Knox County elementary schools got to participate in the SSEP's Mission 9 patch design contest. About 1,800 students created patches that represent their communities. Art teachers submitted the top 98 designs from 11 schools to Knox County high schoolers, who chose the top eight designs.

Knox County Schools posted those eight designs on their website for the community to vote on. Beaumont Elementary School fourth-grade student Dossie Nichols created the winning patch.

Dossie Nichols, now in fourth grade at Beaumont Elementary, created the winning patch for the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program Mission 9 patch design competition.(Photo: Submitted by Knox County Schools)

Once in Cape Canaveral, the students will meet other finalist teams, speak with NASA engineers and astronauts and tour the space center. Then, a rocket-propelled SpaceX CRS-10 ferry vehicle will carry their work 249 miles to the International Space Station. Astronauts aboard the space station follow students’ instructions to perform the experiments and return a log to earth. The students will use the log to record the experiment’s results.